The Electric Umbrella Turns On

Opening a few days before the rest of Innoventions, the quirky quick service restaurant “The Electric Umbrella” begins serving its guests traditional American fare, with a new mezzanine for increased capacity added a few years later.

This redesign was spearheaded by returning Disney Legend Rolly Crump as he relates in the book “It’s Kind of a Cute Story”:

I also did the design for the Electric Umbrella restaurant, too. It was originally called Stargate Restaurant, but that entire area was going through a re-design in the mid-1990s. The name came about one day in a meeting when some guy asked if we would be interested in electric umbrellas to sell in EPCOT. They literally were electric umbrellas, because they had some lights on the top of them. Well, the design of them stunk, but I absolutely loved the name and thought it would be a great title for the new restaurant. In fact, when we pitched the idea to Michael Eisner, he liked the name so much that he wanted to name the whole damn building the Electric Umbrella! Obviously, that idea got squashed, and it turned out to be called Innoventions.

Click/Tap on the Electric Umbrella carpet below to download the backdrop for all your digital devices!